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Syria timeline in 2 minutes

State Dept: Confident in Congress

Take Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat who doesn’t yet know how she’ll vote on the measure. Gabbard worries about the unintended consequences of a strike in the Middle Eastern nation, which is riven by a complex civil war.

“If this authorization is approved and this limited strike occurs as the president has presented, there are a number of things outside of our control that could occur, which could potentially further obligate us into something within Syria and the region,” Gabbard told POLITICO Friday morning after leaving a classified briefing.

If Obama hopes for victory in Congress, he must gain the support of undecided Democrats like Gabbard, who served in the military in Iraq and remains active in the National Guard. Democrats are expected to shoulder a Senate vote, if it’s successful. Few rank-and-file Democrats have taken the step of publicly expressing their support for Obama and his Syria mission, even though Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicts the legislation will ultimately pass the Senate.

And the House simply cannot pass — at this time — a use-of-force measure without support from the vast majority of the House Democratic Caucus. A vote in the House is expected in the “next two weeks,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote in a memo to colleagues Friday.

Many Democrats remain in a defensive crouch leaning no, and several House members and senators are publicly stating their opposition. But a president who ran on an anti-war platform endorsing action in Syria may actually help the administration’s case, said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), a key Obama ally who remains undecided.

“I think that may be to his advantage. That he in the past has taken the stance he has taken on war, because I think people will say: ‘Okay, here’s somebody who has had this stance for a long time and now he’s saying because of these particular circumstances, I believe that we must do this,’” Cummings said.

And other House Democrats want to ensure Congress is playing a major role in the ongoing debate over whether to strike Syria in response to the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

“The one thing I would say is that the president should understand … that Congress’s role in matters of war and peace is not just an advisory role,” said Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), who is leaning against military action in Syria.

Obama and his lieutenants have engaged in a “flood the zone” approach, contacting as many as one-third of lawmakers individually over the congressional recess and holding several classified briefings on the Hill. Senior administration officials will address the whole House on Monday evening, while White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who remains highly popular among lawmakers, will meet with the House Democratic Caucus on Tuesday morning. National Security Adviser Susan Rice is meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus on Monday and a full Senate briefing is planned for Monday evening.

Several Democrats said Senate leadership is not yet actively drumming up support for Syria, leaving much of heavy lifting to the Obama administration. For some, the White House’s approach is working.

One of those Senate leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said Friday that he will support authorization of military action, calling the resolution in the Senate “clear, limited and specific.”

“To me, there is enough evidence that there has been a chemical weapons attack, that it was authorized by the regime and I believe that we have to demonstrate that you can’t do that. So I’m leaning in that direction,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), adding that he wanted to make sure the final resolution was narrow enough.

Undecided Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said he trusted the administration’s intelligence and its approach. But he said he needed to look at all the evidence himself before he could take the leap into the Syrian conflict.

“I trust Barack Obama. I trust Joe Biden. I trust John Kerry. There’s a need to verify, and I’m going through that verification process. It includes briefings, it includes actually reading top secret information,” Carper said.

Thus far, Senate and House Democratic leaders that support a strike have been reluctant to publicly twist members’ arms to support the resolution. On Friday, Reid cast action overseas as a moral imperative given the horrors of gas attacks and predicted the legislation will ultimately pass the Senate.

“We lost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people during World War One with gas,” Reid said. “If this doesn’t call for a response, I don’t know what does.”